


Lead By Example

by tarysande



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, Regret, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-18
Updated: 2012-01-18
Packaged: 2017-10-29 17:41:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/322452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarysande/pseuds/tarysande
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How many times can a man lose his family?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lead By Example

**Author's Note:**

> A companion piece to [Made By Our Mistakes](http://archiveofourown.org/works/321693) inasmuch as it involves the same Hawke (Kiara, rogue archer) and takes place around the same time (though in a different place, for reasons that are made obvious).

Sebastian has had more families than most, and he has lost them all.

It’s when he starts to think about _why_ and _how_ and _when_ he lost everything that he grows distressed. He is, after all, far too culpable. More than he’s admitted, even to himself.

His first family was his when he was Sebastian Vael, youngest grandson of the reigning Prince of Starkhaven. His parents had their heir, a spare, and him. He rather suspects his mother had wished him a girl; there was a peculiar disappointment in her eyes when she looked at him, even before he earned it, and she had a tendency to gaze at the little girls running about Court with troubled longing.

Sebastian Vael wore his place in his family like an ill-made suit of armor and it chafed, so he sought the false god of pleasure, thinking it would take him in, would anesthetize him. What ill could not be cured by love, by laughter, by singing in taverns until dawn?

He was wrong, of course. The countless nights spent in the arms of nameless women with their interchangeable faces and bodies and breasts, and the countless empty bottles and empty tankards and emptied purses did little to drown his sorrows or fill the empty, aching space within him. These things magnified his pain instead of numbing it. Lying with a woman was not love, no more than buying rounds purchased true friendship. Sometimes, in the middle of a particularly vulgar verse of some drinking song or another, snatches of the Chant of Light would drift into his mind, and the evening would taste only of disappointment, and be spoiled.

He is older now, and wiser, and hindsight has clarified all too much. His were the actions of a spoiled child, a child denied nothing and who expected his slightest whims to be obeyed and acted upon instantly. He had been selfish, so very selfish, and thoughtless. Until the day his parents committed him to the Chantry, he’d never considered how his self-destructive desires might be destroying them, too.

He knows now. Too late.

Though he can recognize now why his parents thought it best to banish him to the Chantry, the loss stings. More so, perhaps, because amends will never be made now. No apology will bring his first family back from their graves. He’d waited too long, holding on to the vestiges of indignation, telling himself he would return to Starkhaven as a full Brother and apologize then. He is not sure what he wanted them to say, but he is fairly certain he wanted them to be _proud_.

Pride—having it, wanting it—is a dangerous thing indeed.

The second family called him Brother Sebastian and, almost against his will, the sanctuary of the Chantry became home. It was a family he did not want, in the beginning. Too many brothers and sisters, and no sense of how he fit in the hierarchy. He’d resented the Chantry. Hated it a little, even. Wanted to escape it, certainly. If not for Grand Cleric Elthina… but no. He cannot bear to think of her now, cannot bear to consider this fresh loss.

For years he’d avoided seeing disappointment in this new mother’s eyes, and he had thrived. The hollow space began to fill, slowly. Love could be found in following the Maker. Laughter was often heard in the Chantry—the first time he’d heard Grand Cleric Elthina laugh he’d nearly wet himself. It didn’t seem… _serious_ enough. And the Chant brought song into his life that did not fill him with dread or shame.

Still, however, he chafed. He clung to pieces of his past. He never gave up the fine armor his father had given him, though he knew the vows of poverty ought to have included such a thing. Nights were long, and lonely, and love of the Maker and His work was not _quite_ the love he longed for.

He was… happy. Happier. Less empty. But not full.

It was never quite enough.

No wonder, then, he’d been so willing to give it all up the day he discovered the fate of his first family. The line between justice and vengeance was such a thin one. So easy to step over. The Grand Cleric had known it. Sebastian had not. Not then.

He had seen disappointment in her eyes for the first time, that day. And he had walked away, knowing he could never go back. Even if he returned to the Chantry, it would be a different Sebastian who walked in the door. Elthina had known that, too.

And now the second family, like the first, has been murdered. All those brothers and sisters. Love, ended. Laughter and song, silenced. Elthina, like his own parents, will never hear his apology.

And he will avenge them. He will avenge them all. Or die in the attempt.

Much as he’d like to, he cannot pretend not to know the expression Elthina would have worn at such a declaration, and it gives him pause.

 _Death is never justice, Sebastian._

It is not until he’s walking away, his vow to Hawke still ringing in his ears—that he realizes he’s leaving a third family to what may very well be their doom. For years he has followed Hawke. He has been neither Prince nor Brother; indeed he’s constantly remained balanced on the knife-edge between these two extremes. He’s just been Sebastian. And for years Sebastian has watched Kiara Hawke do the right thing, even when _right_ was not _easy_. For years he has admired her, even when he could not entirely approve of the company she kept. For years he has… but no. This, too, he cannot think of. Not now. Perhaps not ever.

 _To change a person’s heart, one has to lead by example._

They are his own words, but what kind of example is he setting now? No, worse: what kind of example would it have set for Hawke to execute Anders?

It would have satisfied vengeance, but not justice.

Sebastian stops, shaken. He puts a hand out to steady himself, but misjudges the distance and falls to his knees in a grim mockery of prayer.

Has he learned _nothing_? Is he still the selfish, spoiled child expecting his every demand be catered to instantly? A princeling who throws tantrums when they are not?

 _I’ve never had so many opportunities to help people!_ he’d once told Varric. Because being with Hawke—working with Hawke—it _was_ exciting. Fulfilling. _Real._

And he’d left her. In her time of greatest need, he’d left her.

He knows then he must go back.

There are too many templars, now. Fires have started. The streets are in chaos. Sebastian does his best to avoid the conflicts, slipping through shadows, sliding over walls and through dim alleys.

It’s his armor that gives him away. Of course. Even darkness cannot completely mask it.

“There! He’s one of hers!”

Sebastian is quick with his bow; he always has been. He has an arrow nocked, aimed, and ready to fire before the templar finishes crying, “Traitor!”

And then the unthinkable happens.

His bowstring—the bowstring he worked for _years_ to be able to pull effortlessly, quickly—snaps, the broken end whipping back to lash him across one cheek. It stings. His perfectly aimed arrow flies wide; he hears the shaft shatter as it hits a wall.

He looks down and there, protruding from his blinding white armor—how foolish to have clung to such a thing for so long; how foolish to be blundering about in a war zone wearing a target; how many times has Hawke been seen or threatened because he was _proud_ of the princely armor his father had given him?—is a blade. At the end of a blade stands a man. Just a man, no different than he. Misguided, perhaps. Led astray, possibly. A man. Just a man. They are all just men and women and _mortal_.

“Maker forgive you,” Sebastian gasps. His mouth tastes of blood. “Maker forgive me. Maker forgive us all.”

Without bothering to pull the blade free, the templar releases his grip and stumbles backward. Sebastian thinks the man shouts orders to leave, to abandon him. The templar sounds… horrified.

 _Death is never justice._

The pain comes then, bright and hard and cold, and with the pain comes memory. Fenris, kneeling in prayer he will never admit to. Aveline’s eyes filling with tears the day he told her he had added Wesley to the memorial wall. Isabela, stealthily dropping the coins she won cheating at cards into the hands of desperate children.

Anders, wilting over a patient, unwilling to stop, unwilling to give up, pouring his magic into a body already too far gone to save. This memory pains him. Sebastian wants to think only of the revolutionary, the murderer, the deluded traitor. He does not want to remember the mage as a man willing to give everything of himself to help dying refugees. He does not want to think of Anders as a man weeping over the dead he could not aid.

Misguided, perhaps. Led astray, possibly. A man. Just a man.

And Hawke. Oh, his Hawke. Laughing over a pint. Teasing him. The shadows her lashes cast on her cheeks as she bows her head in prayer. The fierce desire to protect those less fortunate, those downtrodden, those enslaved. Her diplomacy. Her fire. How she can’t carry a tune in a bucket, but it’s never stopped her from singing.

 _Oh,_ he realizes, _I’m dying. This is the moment of Divine judgment._

He will miss his third family most of all. It is not until now, staring down a blade at his own ending, that he realizes how little his life had chafed, these past years.

How full his life had been. How tragic to only realize it now.

The glowing figures appear as if from nowhere, one white, one blue. The blue one reaches out, and the light that envelops him is warm, so warm, he hadn’t realized how cold he was until the warmth sears along his veins, chasing the ice away. It pulls him slightly from his slide into memory. They are so beautiful. The pain ebbs when he looks at them. For a moment.

Sebastian breathes, “I… are you… to take me to the Maker’s side…”

Perhaps it should seem odd that divine creatures of the Maker’s will would pause and exchange concerned looks, but Sebastian can hardly focus enough to notice. His death is chasing him down a long, dark hallway, vicious as a rabid wolf.

“I don’t know about this, Fenris. This is bad. It’s really bad. He’s far gone. He’s… not all here.”

“Try,” growled the glowing white figure. “We’re not safe here. We must return to the mansion.”

“You want to _move_ him? I… I don’t think…”

“ _Try_.”

The blue light grows warmer still, until it’s too hot to be soothing. Sebastian writhes under the force of the power, all the while hearing the half-uttered pleas of the woman—and she is only a woman, he sees now, not divine at all; Hawke’s little sister, with her shy smiles and healing hands—kneeling above him. His vision clears enough for him to see they are both drenched in blood and gore and… substances not worth thinking too hard about.

“K-kia-kiara?” Sebastian manages to stammer. “Is… she…?”

“Be quiet,” the elf commands, never taking his sharp gaze from the entrance to the street. In a slightly gentler tone, he adds, “She survived. We all survived. As to the rest? Time will tell. This battle is over. The war has just begun.”

As the blue light begins to fade, Hawke’s sister wipes a shaking hand over her face, indifferent to the fresh streak of blood that hand leaves behind. “Okay. I think that will hold. You’ll have to carry him home, Fenris. _Gently_.”

 _Home_ , Sebastian thinks. The darkness is pressing in now, but he is suddenly certain it is not his time to walk at the Maker’s side. Amends. Apologies. Family. _Yes, home. Take me home._


End file.
